Robert Kraft case spotlights sex trafficking in Massachusetts

Friday

Robert Kraft is accused of soliciting prostitution more than 1,400 miles away in Jupiter, Florida, making the suspected crime feel far away from the home of his New England Patriots.

But in reality, sexual acts for money – similar to what Kraft has pleaded not guilty – happen frequently across Massachusetts, fueled by widespread human trafficking.

“This is an activity that exists in Florida, it exists in Massachusetts, it exists all over the country,” said Attorney General Maura Healey during her semi-regular “Ask the AG” show on WGBH radio in February.

The National Human Trafficking Hotline, operated by the Washington, D.C., nonprofit Polaris, reports it received 346 calls in reference to Massachusetts during 2017, representing a 25 percent increase from 2016, and nearly 40 percent more than five years prior.

The largest number of calls, which experts say only represents the tip of the iceberg when it comes to human trafficking, was related to sex trafficking at illegal massage and spa businesses. Kraft is suspected of visiting a day spa where he solicited prostitution, according to Florida prosecutors.

But the issue of sex trafficking goes far beyond massage parlors, and while people often associate victims with individuals depicted in major-motion pictures, including women experiencing homelessness, or people suffering from drug addictions, the stereotypes often fall short, according to Peter L. DiMarzio, victims’ assistance specialist for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security based in Boston.

“It can be anybody,” he said during a Jan. 29 panel discussion at Regis College in Weston. The panel was focused on what Massachusetts is doing to fight human trafficking.

“It could be your mother, your daughter or your niece,” he said.

The ease of access to buy and sell sex has also proliferated in the digital age, due in part to adult classified websites and online message boards, which use thinly veiled words such as “bodyworks” massage services to sell sex.

Offline meet-ups can be arranged online where sex buyers – or “johns” – can stay relatively anonymous, making it difficult for law enforcement to track.

In Boston, the most popular time for people to search online to buy sex is 2 p.m. on a workday, according to Healey and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh. The duo last year helped form a public-private coalition with nearly two dozen businesses called Employers Against Sex Trafficking, designed to crack down on work-time searches for sex buying.

At the time, Demand Abolition, an organization working to eradicate sex trafficking, estimated there were about 20,000 ads selling people for sex online each month in Boston. Demand Abolition is working to eliminate demand for commercial sex, promoting the tagline, “No Buyers, No Business.”

Despite the prevalence of sex trafficking, however, prosecutors struggle to bring charges against suspected traffickers, even after getting more power to do so in 2011 when Massachusetts became the 48th state in the country to make human trafficking a crime.

A 2017 Wicked Local investigative series on sex trafficking showed the state then had 35 open prosecutions. In January, Beth Keeley, chief of the Human Trafficking Division at Attorney General Office, said the state had 39 open prosecutions, of which 37 were related to sex trafficking (the other two were related to labor trafficking).

“We’re working hard and we’re trying to get as many as we can,” Keeley said. “They’re difficult and complex cases.”

When cases are not rock solid, they can be dismissed. Other times, charges are downgraded, as was the case in 2013 when Lan Yu Ma pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of solicitation of prostitution and placed on probation. She was originally charged with human trafficking for running a salon in Oxford, which carries a mandatory minimum of five years in prison.

At some point after the 2013 guilty plea, Lan moved to Vero Beach, Florida, where she was arrested last month in the same sting operation that swept up Kraft. She’s now facing human trafficking, racketeering and prostitution charges.

Nonetheless, prosecutors have had some success bringing cases across the finish line.

In December, Xiu J. Chen, 38, of Medford, was found guilty and sentenced to five years in state prison for running a human trafficking operation. She ran a series of bodywork services out of businesses in Bedford, Billerica, Medford, Reading and Woburn.

In February 2018, Marvin Pompilus was convicted and sentenced up to six and a half years in prison for trafficking multiple women in Boston, Braintree, Hyannis and Randolph.

Keeley explained sex trafficking cases are especially difficult to build because it takes time for victims to feel comfortable enough to talk with prosecutors, and building enough evidence without their input is a challenge.

In Florida, prosecutors say they have video evidence tying Kraft to his suspected crimes. In most instances, however, cases are made on victims’ involvement, often making it less cut and dry.

“I’ve always said working with a victim of sex trafficking is like taking one step forward and three or four steps backward,” DiMarzio said.

But some victims and survivors are coming forward to help bring some justice against traffickers, including in Fall River on Feb. 26 when Peterson Raymond, 33, of Taunton, was convicted of sex trafficking and sentenced up to 10 years in prison, according to the Taunton Gazette, a Wicked Local sister publication.

The survivor read a statement, saying she felt humiliated and angry.

“Please think about that when you’re sending him to prison,” she told the judge. “Why should he be free when I’m not free?”

Eli Sherman is an investigative and in-depth reporter at Wicked Local and GateHouse Media. Email him at esherman@wickedlocal.com, or follow him on Twitter @Eli_Sherman.